How can someone establish his existence beyond the conditions of immediate human drive to survive? It is difficult for us to imagine our possibility to place our existence ulterior to the essential demands of day to day living. What comes first in our actions is our immediate survival instinct just postponing higher goals in existence and respectable ways of preserving identity. The Papa in the movie ‘My Beautiful Launderette’ by Hanif Kureishi suggests to his next generation of migrants to establish their identity in the new territory through some harsh means to make it prestigious and exemplary. In the movie, when his brother Nasser succeeds as a petty businessman in London, the other members of his community takes him as a role model. Nasser shows that the migrant Pakistanis can play the survival game better than the British lads who finally and paradoxically had to work under him, indicating that under Capitalism all static identities disappear and profit can evaporate all that is concrete.
Papa is the only person who believed in education as a means of meaningful survival which can bring about a true challenge to European civilization. Being a Socialist he did not want a short cut in the progressive movement in civilization. His son, Omar too was carried away by the superficiality of the immediate success of the business world, in the form of renovating the launderette. Tania, the major victim of the Thatcherian liberalization policy, too wants to see immediate results in life. Under the hybridism of tradition and modernity, she is deprived of the necessary professional skills to fit into the system; the only survival means. She is confused to find out the complex sexual identity of the migrant youths, perhaps the second generation of the British-Pakistanis. Her failure as a primary object of attraction aggravates her identity crisis.
Omar's sexual identity is also somewhat complex and it is formatted as part of the survival game. In this context, Johnny's association is essential for Omar to succeed in the laundry business. Johnny's affiliation with the white youths is a way to get rid of potential troubles (the underemployed white youths are politically organized under an anti-migrant signifier)and to use his physical strength in the business. Omar also does not show much emotional passionate-ness towards Johnny. In this context, the film illustrates the identity crisis of the Pakistanis in their emotional life.
Since these Pakistanis could not make their way to elite jobs in the system due to their reluctance to proceed in higher education, they were not able to locate themselves in the key positions in the structure. As a result, their social status became highly vulnerable and fragile. Being not properly rooted in the system, Papa realizes that their financial strength alone could not make them ‘organic’ in this strange soil. Papa seems to believe in some Kantian modernism where education functions as a means of enlightenment, the only way to a higher humanity. He is the only one who could observe how their life has become extremely superficial, both culturally and politically in addition to their involvement in the underground. Hence he insists on Omar to go to the high school for further education because he knew that these Pakistanis will never be seriously ‘regarded’ by the British. Papa is afraid that the Pakistanis will continue to be treated as ‘traders’ who know only how to squeeze the right buttons of the system. Papa's role is prophetic here as far as the future of the Pakistanis is concerned.
Papa’s observation is correct even today for many Muslims (as well as for other communities who migrate from Asia and Africa) who migrate to West to find better jobs and earn more. They can survive but cannot challenge the real spirit of the West. The only way one can conquer West is not through financial strength or material wealth but through a challenging spirit which proves that we are stronger than them. We must prove that we are strong not by revisiting where they went wrong. Education is still the only radical means to do that.
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